Escape From Guayaquil

We had planned on taking the 5:00 am shuttle to the airport to catch our flight, but when I exited the elevator into the remarkably quiet lobby, GQ was angrily pacing back and forth.  "The shuttle just took off at 4:45!" he sputtered in disbelief that even something as simple as an airport shuttle that is supposed to run every half an hour to an airport about five minutes away, could be screwed up.  To compensate for their incompetency, the hotel paid for our taxi ride to the airport.  However this was just the first of several incompetent acts on our journey home, which appears to be the hallmark of all travel in Latin America.

1. Taxi - Me, Mini and GQ (Skips had left he night before) stood on the curb watching the cab driver and bellman try and cram three weeks of luggage for three people into a subcompact car, while shaking our heads sure that this was just another exercise in time wastage.  Finally the lightbulb goes off and the bellman offers the solution of two taxis, which we had already thought of ten minutes before.
2. Ticket Counter in Guayaquil - We checked in, but for some unknown reason, the the lady at the counter could not print our boarding pass for our connection in Panama.  Mini tried to ask in Spanish to see if this would help at all, but still she insisted that the system could not do it.  When we looked down at our boarding passes, I had both, GQ had his for Guayaquil to Panama and Mini had hers from Panama to Newark.   Startlingly (or maybe not so), Mini managed to pay her airport tax and get past several checkpoints without anyone questioning that she didn't have a boarding pass for the first leg of our journey!
3. Security Checkpoint - In one of the dumbest moves I have ever made during my extensive travels, I had forgotten to remove the butter knife stolen from the hotel restaurant (which was used to prepare our lunchtime PB&J) from the front pocket of my laptop bag.  This would have trumped the time I lost my departure card in Indonesia and was threatened with being blacklisted from the whole country, however since this happened in Ecuador, it ended up being nothing.  After discovering the knife, security felt the edge and realized it was totally dull and then took me to the side to fill out some paperwork.  I was a little scared as I had just carried a weapon into an airport but instead of hauling me off for questioning, they gave me back the knife!  "Am I in trouble?" I asked, but the security guy just smiled and said "No" while handing me my knife, sticky with jelly.
4. Secondary Check For Mini - Somewhere amid the mess of the security check, Mini was hauled off for a secondary check of her luggage by scary men with guns and dogs.  "It's because I am Mexican" she insists, which sadly, is likely true. In Ecuador, Canadian woman with a knife = good, while 4'9 Mexican woman = possible drug mule.
5. Boarding Passes in Panama - GQ headed to the lounge to retrieve his boarding pass while me and Mini went to peruse the extensive selection of duty free shops.  When we all met up at the gate, he appeared visibly annoyed.  He had given the woman in the lounge (who appeared to be an English speaker) his passport, the flight number and destination and in return she handed him a boarding pass to Portland belonging to some dude named Mark Freeman.  Upon retelling of the story, Mini said, imitating the lounge lady, "No warr-rry Mr. Gringo, we will, send you to a dee-fferent country."  Then, while trying to grab a snack and a quick caffeine fix (I'm guessing), he engaged in a dance of sorts with the mop lady, intent on continuing to mop despite his efforts to grab things off the buffet table.  They should reassign that mop lady to the womens bathroom near gate 23.
6. Boarding - We were standing in line to board when some entitled geriatric tried to cut in front of us, pretending not to see about 35 people already in line. "We're in line" GQ informed her firmly. Since me and Mini were then taken out of line to verify our documents, after the check, I skipped to the front of the line.  The same geriatric gave me a nasty look and gestured for me to go to the back of line to which I told her in my best entitled American (even though I'm Canadian) voice "I was taken out of line and now I'm getting back in."  Once on the plane, I was seated where another geriatric (a nice one though) had the seat next to me, so I thought.  But as has happened on every flight, again someone has misread the complicated number and letter identifying their assigned seat, which is clearly printed on the boarding pass and ended up in the wrong seat.

Other highlights:

Mini on all the crazy people we had encountered so far before boarding our flight from Panama to Newark:

"Maybe the-ay are the norrr-mal ones and we are cray-zay?"

Mini on our tall, well-built flight attendant, with a hideous chin-strap beard, passing out entry documents on the same flight:

Mini: "He is cu-ute, but hee is ga-ay"
(Mini proceeds to impersonate his hulk-like stance with arms held away from his body as he has overdeveloped his lats to the point that he can no longer rest his arms at his sides)

GQ: "You can tell he's gay from his build?"

Me: "No, you can tell he's gay from his voice and mannerisms."

GQ: "Umm you can tell he's gay because he's a FLIGHT ATTENDANT."

Mini and GQ sitting side by side in the worst Continental business class seats EVER - no leg room, no footrest, no pillow and seats that recline at approximately a 70 degree angle!  While Mini is curled up comfortably, napping with her hot pink sweatshirt wrapped snuggly around her for a blanket, GQ has his legs sprawled out, with both knees practically on either side of the occupant of the seat in front of him, in an effort to maintain circulation in his lower extremities.

The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful and I'm finally home. What a test of patience the last three weeks have been and there is a lot I won't miss about Ecuador.  At our last dinner we all talked about what we would miss - fried eggs at breakfast, the huge comfy bed and the cute iguanas.  But I am ridiculously happy to be home - and to eat my bowl of cereal, sleep in my bed and well...I'll still miss the iguanas.